On Caligula: A Biography, by Aloys Winterling. Caligula, the third emperor of Rome, figures today as the classic template for a Mad King. To a man, antique historians—Seneca, Tacitus, Suetonius, ...

Nearly 2,000 years ago, a Roman emperor known as Caligula briefly reigned over much of Europe, the Near East and northern Africa. Ancient historians describe him as a megalomaniac, a pervert and ...

In the long history of Roman emperors, it’s the mad ones who mostly linger in popular memory. That certainly includes Caligula—meaning “little boots,” the nickname he picked up as a child dressed in ...

The Roman emperor Caligula's name has become a byword for depraved tyranny, used as a popular benchmark for everyone from Idi Amin to Jean-Bedel Bokassa. But was Caligula really mad and bad, or the ...

King Canute has had a raw deal from history. He took his throne down to the beach in order to show his servile courtiers that not even a king could control the waves (that was in God’s power alone).

In this lively biography of Rome's infamous third emperor, readers will not find the wild-eyed dictator the public has, for nearly two millennia, come to expect. Offering not an apology for the "mad" ...